2001

The biggest gain for India from the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation that concluded at Doha on November 14 is that a fresh round of trade negotiations has been kicked off. It is also to India’s advantage that the Doha meet has incorporated into the WTO agenda several concerns of developing countries and by doing so promises to take the process of globalisation and global integration ahead. India played a proactive role in the negotiations. Although it could be argued that trade minister Maran and his team displayed more vigour in pushing what have come to be identified as India’s national postures than in correctly identifying what indeed are our national interests, there is no gainsaying that India played an important role in securing a major achievement of the summit – developing country assertion of their interests.

The bomb and missile attacks by US and British aircraft on targets in Afghanistan connected with the Taliban regime and with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organisation, which got under way on Sunday, had been prepared for elaborately from the moment the US pinpointed bin Laden and Al Qaeda as the prime suspects in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. As the world watched with bated breath, the US and Britain had set about putting together the most awesome assembly of military personnel and materiel all around Afghanistan for precisely this operation. A relentless diplomatic effort too had been mounted to get an impressive number of countries to permit combat aircraft to use their air-space and some also to agree to the stationing of troops on their territories. The air attacks on Afghanistan have been on for less than a week and there is no indication yet of when the expected, but far more problematic, land operations would begin. But already it is clear that, even if the US government’s most optimistic expectations of it are fulfilled, the military effort directed at Afghanistan cannot be the all-important, or the most effective, element in the success of the drive against terrorism that it has been made out to be by the Bush administration.

The approaching elections in Uttar Pradesh have upped the stakes in fixing the minimum support price for sugarcane in the state. The Rajnath Singh government wants to raise the state-advised price (SAP) by Rs 50 per tonne, from Rs 900 now, for the new crop year 2001-02 (October-September). The sugar industry in the state, which already has pending dues of over Rs 1,000 crore to be paid to farmers and is burdened with huge sugar stocks, wants the SAP to be maintained at the current level. However, given the political compulsions, it seems inevitable that there will be a hike in the sugarcane price. SAP-induced troubles afflict other sugar-producing states too. In Tamil Nadu, a white paper tabled recently in the assembly acknowledged that high SAP for cane has severely affected the finances of sugar mills in the state, pushing many into the red. Other states also have sugar mills reeling under huge debt burdens as a result of arbitrarily fixed cane prices.